‘Paul, Apostle of Christ’ is a good, thoughtful movie that many critics won’t like

Mar 24, 2018 by

by Matt Walsh, Daily Wire.

[…] This movie is not one of the best of all time. But it is quite good. And these complaints aren’t really complaints about the movie itself but complaints about how it was marketed and titled. Perhaps they should have called it “The Last Days of Paul.” Or else they could have called it “Luke,” because Luke, played by Jim Caviezel, is really the star of the film. He takes up the majority of the screen time as he bounces between Rome’s community of persecuted Christians and his aging mentor in a dark dungeon. The physician and apostle counsels his Christian brothers and sisters, treats their wounded, and, in his conversations with Paul, exhorts him to tell his story so that an account can be made of his incredible life and works. This account eventually became the Acts of the Apostles.

By the time the film starts, Nero, the deranged emperor of Rome, has already set fire to half the city and blamed it on the followers of “The Way.” As a result, Christians are being brutally slaughtered. Despite the film’s PG-13 rating, it is pretty unsparing in depicting these atrocities, or at least their aftermath. The very first scene takes place on a street lit by the burning corpses of crucified Christians. Later we see a mother covered in the blood of her murdered infant, a young boy lying lifeless on a table after being beaten to death, a crucified man watching in terror as Roman soldiers prepare to burn him alive, and so on. One of the most powerful scenes shows Luke in a prison cell, comforting a group of Christians who are about to be eaten by lions. The exchange is brief but profound, and becomes even more moving as the camera pans across the faces of the doomed prisoners and settles finally on the face of a young girl.

There is nothing gratuitous or gory. In fact you could make the argument that they should have embraced the R and really shown us the plight of these Christians in all of its gruesomeness. But what they do show is appropriately startling, affecting, and restrained enough to make the film suitable for kids. All in all, the viewer is made to understand just what these early Christians were up against. And that is really the point of the story, in the end.

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